OPEN RP.

[cryptofascist]

INBOX + OPEN POST

General Discovery content warnings: violence, death, grief, war, mass murder, genocide, internment, animal abuse, sexual assault (dubcon, noncon and grooming), brainwashing, torture (physical and psychological), PTSD, survivor's guilt, sci-fi racebending, subjugation, slavery, racism, quasi-cannibalism, xenophobia. And spoilers.

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[cryptofascist]

[ The successful mission to the Discovery's sister vessel, the USS Glenn, came at a cost. A team of five returned as three, escaping the ghost ship with the salvage logs and spore drive technology they'd been tasked with retrieving. A one-in-a-million accident caused the drive to catastrophically malfunction upon the completion of a test jump, fundamentally reorganizing the cells of every crew member on board. The reports were harrowing: human bodies stretched like rubber and tied in knots, Klingon scavengers ripped apart and painting the walls.

The beast responsible for the latter horror, as well as the deaths of the two Discovery crew members, was also salvaged.

Stamets probably appreciates having one more reason to hate him, and Lorca couldn't care less about how the other officer is getting along. But the last survivor is of special importance to him. Once she's had time to make her report and decompress, whatever that might mean to her, he reaches out with a buzz on her communicator. ]

Ensign January. To my ready room.

[hopefulnaive]

[Annie's grateful to have a reprieve from her own thoughts. Ever since having been released from the medical bay and having completed her report, she had been standing, stupidly, in an empty lift, trying to figure out where to go.

She couldn't bear to be around her crewmates right now. They would want to ask questions about what had happened and what she'd seen, and she wasn't up for providing deflecting answers or putting on an amiable facade. Likewise, she couldn't bear to go to her own quarters right now. She couldn't be alone with her thoughts. Every time she closed her eyes--and most of the time she had them open--she saw flashes of it all again.

So here she was, standing in a lift, looking blank every time the doors opened and a puzzled crewmember traveled with her in silence to their own destination. She felt ridiculous, but she also couldn't make a decision.

Strength training, maybe, to fatigue herself until she was too tired to think. No good--her hands were quivering, even now. Target practice, to give herself a task to focus on. No, same problem. Mess hall, she should eat, how many hours had it been since she'd eaten? But no, there wasn't a chance she'd be able to keep anything down.

You're not some fresh-faced trainee anymore, she told herself sternly. You've seen combat. You've survived perilous situations. You shouldn't be puking your guts out, repeatedly, over ... over ...

Her brain froze up, skipping over itself like a corrupted recording, going blank rather than letting her finish that thought. The doors opened. The other crewmember startled, and probably gave her some look which Annie didn't lift her head to see. The doors closed again.

The buzz of her communicator drew her attention. She hoped she wasn't far gone enough that it had buzzed more than once.

Lorca. Captain Lorca, she reminded herself. Any past slip of formalities when they were stranded in a combat scenario was past. Her heart flipped over at the sight of his name. That first instinctual jolt of anxiety at being summoned by her commanding officer, like she was eight years old and being called to the principal's office, was such a mundane emotion that it was pleasant improvement to her emotional state. It was followed by disappointment and dread as it occurred to her that this was no doubt because of her recent ordeal mission, which meant he'd have more questions to ask or need her to rehash it all again. There couldn't be any other reason for the summons. She squashed the tiny flare of infatuation that wanted to think it was because she was special, that she was valuable to him in some way.

Regardless, she had a command to follow now. Her hand reached for the lift controls. She stated the necessary floor. Emptying her mind of anything but the instruction she'd been given, she let her feet take her to Lorca's ready room.

[cryptofascist]

[ Besides his chief engineer, January is the most precious soldier on the ship. Not for what she can do, like Stamets, but for who she is. Gabriel Lorca didn't serve with any of Discovery's crew in the past. He can't use any of them as a barometer of how well he's maintaining his impersonation. Without her, he'd have nothing but infrequent communications with Cornwell to rely on. His superior.

Lorca still chafes at that. Cornwell enjoys great esteem in the Empire, as well, but she doesn't outrank him. Their trust of each other is hardwon and will hold a tenuous undercurrent for him until she either betrays it or dies. A state of affairs they sometimes joke about. Federation relationships are built on more solid foundations. The resulting leeway gives him comfort when he's incensed at the idea of Katrina being his undoing.

January poses no such risk. The Buran was home to over a hundred officers. He assumed when he first met her that the captain would have little cause to regularly engage with someone so low-ranking, and he seemed to be correct. The Lorca he's replacing wasn't a very social man, going by his personal logs and correspondence. He was respected, sufficiently compassionate so that the sacrifice of his entire crew didn't raise suspicion. Many of his peers would never look at him the same way again, but then Lorca was seeing all of them for the first time. It made no difference.

He got the Discovery. An asset as vital as her could only go to someone capable of making the hard decisions.

Would January have accepted the posting he offered her here if not for the bedrock of admiration her captain had prepared for his usurper? Would she look past the changes in him if not for their shared trauma, the day the Buran was lost? Circumstances had to align just right. She isn't just perfect for the position he's put her in. She was made for it.

A featureless ball of fur sitting on the corner of his standing desk coos as she enters. Lorca nods in greeting, both hands braced on the desk's edge. Besides the viewport into space and the screen set into one wall, the dim room is otherwise bare. He doesn't want people getting comfortable in here. ]

Did I interrupt anything?

[hopefulnaive]

No, sir. [Annie shakes her head. She feels as though she ought to add some kind of information, since he did ask, but that would be easier if she'd been doing anything. Telling the truth feels like an excuse, feels like complaining, and Annie cannot allow herself either, but she also needs to be honest with him. Probably he's glanced at the reports, both verbal and medical, to know that she's been given several days medical leave from all duties, though it's possible he's received no further medical information. Only the chief medical officer can overrule the captain, after all, and medical records are confidential even to the captain unless they're directly relevant.] They say I'm ... in shock.

[Even that much feels like an excuse, but it's all she has to offer. It's not like she thinks they're wrong, after all, given her newly developed tendency to stand in an elevator for an hour or three at a time. But it's weakness. She ought to be better than this. She feels like she's letting her captain and crew down because she's too fragile to just shake it off. It's not like it's a real injury. People died. She's got some bruises and 'shock'. She should have been better on that ship, so that those people would still be alive, and she should be better now.

It helps, at least, to be here in front of Lorca. Even though she knows he won't give her any kind of special treatment or gentle handling, just being in his presence makes her feel better. It gives her something to focus on, because she always wants to please him. She always wants to be the best possible version of herself in order to earn his approval. And she knows he can rely on him. He was always a good captain, but now ...

He'd kept her alive. He'd protected her, in those awful, desperate times, and that trauma bonding was always going to be there at the back of her mind.

She'd respected him, before all of that. But he'd been distant and ... unexceptional, if she was being honest. Almost bland. A good captain, and ... she had nothing more to say about him. What had happened after had shown her a different side of him. Someone hard and determined to survive. She felt like he'd changed because of what they'd gone through--sometimes she thought that he'd changed before all of that, but it was probably only the distance. She hadn't know him well before. Before, he'd been no one to her. Now ... she was always going to trust him with her life. She was always going to be a tiny bit obsessed with him.

She blinks. Shakes her head. She's not sure how long she spaced out just now. Was that a couple of seconds worth of thoughts or more? Had he said something to her? Fuck this 'shock'. She feels broken, and that weakness enrages her.] I'm sorry, sir. How can I be of help?